Inside were three things: a DNA test, a house deed, and a photograph of a little boy, maybe two years old, grinning at the camera with Michael’s exact eyes.
“His name is Wyatt,” Daniel said quietly. “He calls Michael ‘Daddy.’ His mother works at the hospital near Michael’s parents. As far as I can tell, it’s been going on almost as long as the thing with David.”
I sat with that for a while. It should have shocked me more than it did. It felt less like new information and more like a piece sliding into a shape I’d already half-drawn without realizing it.
“And the deed?” I asked.
Daniel’s jaw tightened. “That’s the part you’re not going to like.”
Our house — the brownstone I’d unlocked that December afternoon with a fourteen-thousand-dollar watch in my bag — had been quietly moved out of both our names and into a trust in Wyatt’s name. The paperwork was dated the day before my release.
“He’s known your release date for months,” Daniel said. “He moved on it the day before, probably hoping you’d be too overwhelmed to check the county records for a while. Long enough for it to settle.”
“Is that even legal?” I asked. “We were still married when I went in.”
“That’s exactly the problem for him,” Daniel said. “You never divorced. Which means depending on how his lawyer structured it, that transfer might not survive a real challenge — especially once a paternity test and a timeline of infidelity going back years are sitting in front of a judge.”
I laughed — short, disbelieving, nothing to do with humor. Three years earlier I’d been the woman buying her husband a watch he didn’t deserve. Now I was holding the paperwork to take back a house he’d tried to steal out from under me while I was locked up for catching him in the act that started all of it.
Part 4: Taking It Back
I wish I could say it resolved cleanly, the way an ending is supposed to. It didn’t. It took months — a lawyer Daniel helped me find, a paternity result Michael’s own attorney couldn’t argue with, a paper trail on the trust that fell apart the moment anyone actually looked at it closely. Priya, Wyatt’s mother, wanted no part of the fight; she settled quickly, asking only that Wyatt’s future be protected no matter how the property dispute ended. I agreed without hesitation. None of it was his fault, or hers.
